CookItFor.Us Brings Airbnb Model to Prepared Food

Editor's Note: See all our Excelerate Labs coverage here.

WHAT: CookItFor.Us connects people who are too busy to cook with licensed chefs and caterers in their area who need customers. To get a chef/caterer to make a recipe, people can like ("crave") one that's already on the site or upload one they find online. Those who own a recipe can post it by joining the recipe affiliate site. The more craves a recipe receives, the more likely a chef/caterer will make it. Chefs/caterers then bid on price to make the dish. Depending on the chef/caterer making the dish, people can have the food delivered to their home, pick it up, or eat it at a restaurant.

Newest feature is "Request a Maker": CookItForUs will find a chef/caterer within 72 hours who can make a recipe on the site for you.

While the demand-driven model is currently only available in Chicago, Request a Maker will eventually roll out nationwide.

LAUNCHERS: Moshe Tamssot, CEO. Conrad Fuhrman, CTO. Larry Johnson, operations advisor.

WHEN/WHERE: October 2010 / Chicago, Public Beta 

WHY: Alternative to fast food and frozen/pre-packaged meals at the grocery store. It's easy to find recipes online but much harder to find someone who can make it for you unless you hire a private chef or catering service. Local fresh foods should be as accessible and convenient as mass-produced items. Consumers like supporting local businesses. Services like Airbnb and GetAround (for cars) have proven there's a market for matching people who have more time than money with people who have more money than time.

BACKSTORY: After growing up with restaurateur parents and working in the food industry, Moshe decided...

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Stunning: MTV Video Music Awards Live Twitter Tracker

We can't imagine a better way to keep up with tweets around tonight's MTV Video Music Awards than this live tweet tracker. The top bar shows the timeline of #vma tweets, with the total in the top-right corner.

You have three ways to view what's happening.

Buzz [ shown above ] gives you a quick overview of who's being talked about most and lets you retweet/reply directly.

Paparazzi shows you which photos are getting...

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For Busy Parents, BabbaCo Delivers Monthly Box of Projects, Stories and Activities

[ From left to right: Christine Gutierrez, VP of operations; Jessica Kim, CEO and founder; Jenny Vyas, e-commerce manager. ]

Editor's Note: See all our Excelerate Labs coverage here.

WHAT: A monthly box, curated around a certain theme, with physical materials and other content to help parents engage with their 3-to-6-year-old kids. The box contains four types of items: projects kids do with their hands, activities, books and stories, and approved apps/downloads.

BabbaCo will eventually offer boxes for other age ranges. Subscription is $29.99 a month or $299 a year; each box has a retail value of $40 to $50.

LAUNCHERS: Jessica Kim, CEO. Christine Gutierrez, VP of operations.

WHEN/WHERE: September 2008 / Chicago. Beta BabbaBox Aug. 15, 2011.

WHY: Parents don't always have the time or energy to determine which activities and projects are appropriate for their child, and then track down the materials needed. Parents want engaging and intellectually stimulating activities for their kids. The monthly subscription model has been applied to other verticals like...

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Klout's Opt-out Policy: Is It Fair?

You probably know your Klout score, and we bet you've compared your score to someone else's by typing in their Twitter handle on Klout's site. That's possible because tweets are public, and Klout builds profiles -- without explicit permission -- on public data.

As the Klout FAQ explains, "Klout collects public data in order to accurately measure influence. Users can control the data available to Klout by changing the privacy settings on individual networks. Klout will never access your private data unless we have explicit permission."

Even people with locked tweets have Klout scores and profiles. All the locked accounts we checked have the basic Klout score of 10, regardless of how many followers they have. This includes porn star Jenna Haze  [ @jenxstudios, 114K followers ] who is influential about music, photography and movies [ not sex? hmmm. ]

But Canada-based marketing expert and social media blogger Danny Brown argues in a recent post that Klout sucks because you have to opt out of their system rather than opt-in.

"No permission -- there you are, as bright as day online, with whatever score they deem you fit to have based on their perception of you," Danny writes.

He then notes, "I understand that by accepting the Terms of Service on the likes of Twitter, etc, your information can be shared. I’m not sold on that...

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Facebook to Google+: Our Photos Are (for Now) Bigger Than Yours

Facebook has increased the display size of user photos and loads them twice as fast as before in an update rolling out over the next few days.

Most likely a reaction to the success of large images on Google+, Facebook images will appear up to 960 pixels wide -- half the size of a standard 21.5 inch monitor -- in the photo viewer. Images on Google+ max out at...

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